"There was only every slot, so you had to fight for all of them"

April 17, 2023 1:36 AM

Jena Friedman Gives Male Comedians the Female Media Treatment
posted by chavenet (33 comments total)

I think what I enjoy about this is, firstly, that these are all very famous comics being asked these very bullshit questions, and that secondly, they clearly haven't been told in advance what the bit is because they all work it out at different times, and then often end up dropping their obvious response to the bit because they're appalled at the kinds of questions they're being asked and what that implies.
posted by Merus at 2:09 AM on April 17, 2023 [8 favorites]

I though they had been told:

A little note on my methodology: For all my interviews, I reached out to my favorite male comedian friends and mentors. I prefaced my intent in advance (something I rarely do before interviews).

...but maybe what's happening is that they're figuring out as they go along what's the best (and funniest) way for them to handle the questions.
posted by a car full of lions at 2:30 AM on April 17, 2023 [12 favorites]

Jim Gaffigan can't possibly be that dense, can he?
posted by Optamystic at 3:09 AM on April 17, 2023 [4 favorites]

God, Jena Friedman is fantastic. I think about her interview with John McAfee all the damn time.

Jim Gaffigan can't possibly be that dense, can he?

Since Friedman mentions Gaffigan responded via email rather than in-person, it could be that his responses are just a lot drier and more face-value than all the ones from people who were having this back-and-forth with her in real time. But I hear unconfirmed rumors that Gaffigan is an extremely pale male dad, so it could be he's just behind the times, and also incredibly pale.
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 3:36 AM on April 17, 2023 [19 favorites]

Do we think maybe Jim Gaffigan maybe didn't read the introductory paragraph to the email where she explained the bit?
posted by Jon_Evil at 3:51 AM on April 17, 2023 [2 favorites]

To me Gaffigan seems to be immersing himself in the role of someone who's experiencing this in real life and is offended by it. He's gone method. Or, alternatively, maybe he wants to demonstrate what he thinks is the correct way to deal with these questions, sort of mansplaining-style.
posted by trig at 3:58 AM on April 17, 2023 [5 favorites]

I have never seen that interview before. Thanks for posting it! It is amaze balls.
posted by Bella Donna at 4:04 AM on April 17, 2023 [1 favorite]

Kind of weird to have a guy who’s abused multiple women participating in this, but okay!
posted by pxe2000 at 4:07 AM on April 17, 2023 [1 favorite]

I think what some of you are reading as "shock at the questions they're being asked" is "shock that these are questions people actually asked Jena".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:38 AM on April 17, 2023 [6 favorites]

If Gaffigan is doing a bit, answering with the same earnest obviousness that they'd been asked with, when directed at Friedman, is a pretty good one.
posted by Reyturner at 5:22 AM on April 17, 2023 [1 favorite]

Was that John McAfee or Robert Downey Jr?
posted by rebent at 5:30 AM on April 17, 2023 [1 favorite]

Kind of weird to have a guy who’s abused multiple women participating in this, but okay!

Who?
posted by Philipschall at 6:27 AM on April 17, 2023 [2 favorites]

Dang it.

Meant to write "obliviousness".
posted by Reyturner at 6:44 AM on April 17, 2023 [1 favorite]

Fred Armisen. I'm not gonna get into it more, because it would absolutely be a derail from a discussion of an otherwise delightful bit.
posted by explosion at 6:49 AM on April 17, 2023 [7 favorites]

I want to give Gaffigan the benefit of the doubt. I say this because I happened to see him on that PBS genealogy program "Finding You Roots," (my mother is a fan), and I have to say he came off more historically aware and self-conscious and empathetic than most of the celebrities interviewed. I'd like to think he has the same kind of social awareness about this topic.
posted by sardonyx at 6:51 AM on April 17, 2023 [3 favorites]

(I think there's a link to the full episode in the link that I posted, but it's region locked for me so I can't be sure.)
posted by sardonyx at 6:53 AM on April 17, 2023 [1 favorite]

Jon Stewart, as you might expect, seems to get it right off the bat. And from there it's fun watching it dawn on them one by one just what's going on -- even though they had a heads-up, apparently, they had no grasp of how horrible it is for women until they received the treatment. Really, really well done.
posted by martin q blank at 7:28 AM on April 17, 2023 [6 favorites]

JENA FRIEDMAN: I’m sorry, I just assumed since you’re a man that you’re a dad.

FRED ARMISEN: No.

Yes.
posted by fiercekitten at 7:37 AM on April 17, 2023 [8 favorites]

I'm glad they are appalled but also surprised they are so surprised by the questions. I was not even a little surprised that any of these questions are asked – because I've listened to what female comedians say I guess?
posted by lookoutbelow at 7:37 AM on April 17, 2023 [4 favorites]

Straight white men, especially, have little or no experience being marked ("a male comedian") and are usually oblivious that many other people are treated that way all the time.

I really like the idea that this kind of privilege is a kind of Schroedinger's Cat where the person gets to somehow both have the status of being in the default class while also treated like they're sui generis.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 7:45 AM on April 17, 2023 [8 favorites]

Jon Stewart, as you might expect, seems to get it right off the bat.

If you want to see how lightning quick he is, Google his Jiminy Glick interview with Martin Short. One of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.
posted by leotrotsky at 8:02 AM on April 17, 2023 [4 favorites]

I really like the idea that this kind of privilege is a kind of Schroedinger's Cat where the person gets to somehow both have the status of being in the default class while also treated like they're sui generis.

Oh but that's totally it. The (cishet white) male experience is taken as a given: we all have those experiences, we all see the world the same way, we all have the same perspectives and formative moments yadda yadda yadda. If you don't have those experiences in common, then it's weird that you don't. And on top of that, everything that you experience is just some kind of freakish aberration: it's an anecdote with no deeper meaning, or it's you doing something wrong somehow, or you're just looking for attention, or you just love picking fights or being bad.

You lose twice over: once for what you're not, and once for what you are. Which is how you wind up with interview questions like these, where the aspect of femaleness is so strange and foreign that it overwhelms literally everything else. "What's it like to be a woman in comedy?" puts the word WOMAN big and bold and in all caps, and comedy as this almost intrusive-thought aside. Gosh, what does it feel like to not be a man? How do you feel doing Man Things as an unman? Is it hard for you to do the comedy of men, the humor of maleness, being so female and, furthermore, non-male? How do the Things of Women, such as the babies that you have, fit into your comedy? It's like they think they're interviewing Air Bud.

(I might have watched a couple of 2023 interviews where scientists and politicians and actresses got asked the kinds of questions Jena's asking now, by bright and earnest-looking bespectacled white men who act like they've discovered a new kind of species. Forgive me if it's not my place to be this grumpy and disgruntled.)
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 8:15 AM on April 17, 2023 [19 favorites]

I just wanna make you guys feel safe, not like how I was when I was asked these questions.

Oh, damn.
posted by wenestvedt at 8:32 AM on April 17, 2023 [9 favorites]

I just wanna make you guys feel safe, not like how I was when I was asked these questions.

I was kind of hoping they'd at least have some fun with the answers, instead of genero-corporate speak. Jon Stewart's thing about those stupid amber alerts was the only funny line, and of course the Bob's Burger kid (Eugene Mirman) about emailing a 2nd draft answer later...

I mean, isn't that advantage of being the default - that you can answer people's serious (stupid) questions comedically without pushback?
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:53 AM on April 17, 2023 [2 favorites]

That was funny. I wish it was longer! Interesting also how Reggie Watts 'gets' it quickly. Like perhaps he also knows something about societal expectations.
posted by latkes at 9:32 AM on April 17, 2023 [3 favorites]

I'm surprised at how leaden their responses are. I worked in a corporate environment for a long time, and there was an ongoing, serious effort to eliminate, or at least identify, gender bias in the workplace. Women were consistently advanced to positions of leadership, and the everyone was solidly aware of this kind of bullshit. Role reversal is a principal tool for getting people to be aware of implicit biases.
That so many of these comics are undone by the gender swap, makes me think that they haven't thought about it at all. A bit of a shock, actually. I mean, their job is to observe this kind of BS.
posted by Carmody'sPrize at 9:41 AM on April 17, 2023 [4 favorites]

I'm surprised at how leaden their responses are.

There's no good way to answer these questions. That's really the point of asking these questions.

If a comedian is doing an interview like this, it's because they're promoting something. A show, an album, a special, whatever. So the interviewer has a choice; set them up to make them look funny, or, you know, not.

By asking questions like these, the interviewer is giving the comedian a no-win situation. Do you make light of your own experience, your own struggles with these issues, and thereby make light of the issues themselves? Do you take the question seriously, thereby making the interview decidedly un-funny, when the point of the interview is to convince people you're funny enough to spend money on? Or do you point out how dumb the question is, thereby alienating the 'journalist' and leaving yourself vulnerable to whatever it is they decide to print?

When a journalist asks a question like these they've failed at the role of 'straight man' in every single sense.
posted by MrVisible at 11:31 AM on April 17, 2023 [11 favorites]

That’s great that she got the input of the male Sandra Bee.
posted by larrybob at 1:01 PM on April 17, 2023 [3 favorites]

When a journalist asks a question like these they've failed at the role of 'straight man' in every single sense.

She's not a journalist, she's a "female comedian". You kinda missed the point.
posted by opsin at 1:59 PM on April 17, 2023 [3 favorites]

I read MrVisible's comment as referring to the journalists who do this in real interviews, and dissecting part of what makes those journalists' behavior so problematic - not to Friedman.
posted by trig at 2:38 PM on April 17, 2023 [9 favorites]

Sure, but they know who she is? Or could have checked.
posted by opsin at 2:55 PM on April 17, 2023 [1 favorite]

Gaffigan's responses were my favorite. He's actually putting himself in a woman's shoes and having to answer those questions the way she might.

The other comedians are deflecting how uncomfortable these questions are with jokes or by turning it into a meta-commentary about how it's ridiculous what women face. Which is nice and also entertaining to read, but it lets them step outside the discomfort of how this would actually feel. Notice how when asked "was it hard to be a male comedian when you were starting out?" John Stewart -- though I love him -- deflects and turns the conversation into how it really was hard to be a female comedian starting out, basically validating that as a question. When the truth is that even though being a woman in a male-dominated field is hard, it's not exactly nice to have to field a bunch of pointed questions about your gender either.

Gaffigan was the one who really leaned into the assignment imo. I think this was a good article but suffered from unfortunate formatting, the way they mixed all the responses together, removed each comment of some of its context.
posted by Emily's Fist at 3:31 PM on April 17, 2023 [9 favorites]

It seems like there are two different ways to answer these questions. The first is the obvious, direct way. The second is to try to answer them from a parallel universe where you have comedians and boy-comedians and the boy-comedians legitimately get asked these questions all the time.
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 5:42 PM on April 17, 2023 [3 favorites]